Xiaomi makes Avaya a Partner in their Growth

Xiaomi is a leading privately-owned electronics and technology company headquartered in Beijing. Xiaomi was founded in 2010 by serial entrepreneur Lei Jun along with seven co-founders, with the belief that high-quality technology doesn’t need to cost a fortune. Today, through the relentless dedication and belief in innovation for everyone, together with the support of its Mi Fans, Xiaomi creates and sells hardware, software and internet services. Apart from smartphones, Xiaomi also has a range of smart home ecosystem products connected via internet including Mi TV, Mi Air Purifier, Mi Water Purifier, Mi Drone, Mi Rice Cooker and Mi Routers dedicated to making daily life simpler and more convenient. At the end of 2016, Xiaomi had over 50 million connected devices across its Mi Ecosystem IoT platform and has become the world’s most successful hardware incubator.

Outside Mainland China, Xiaomi has dedicated operations across Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, India, Indonesia and Brazil and is present in over 20 markets. Today, Xiaomi is one of the leading technology brands and was touted as the second most innovative company in the world by MIT in 2015. It received recognition as one of the Top 50 innovative brands from BCG in 2016, and was rated one of the most innovative companies by Fast Company in 2017.

Hurdles Experienced

Xiaomi was faced with the challenge of a subpar quality CRM system in their contact center. This was hampering their current customer care service ability and restricting their scalability since it was not an integrated system. They were experiencing down time of nearly twenty minutes every week and they were not able to service over a thousand customers every month. The presence of multiple vendors further complicated their ability to track down the source of the problem during an emergency.

Xiaomi’s objective was to keep up with the fast changing business environment and the unparalleled growth of Xiaomi’s user base. Reduction of operational cost by intelligently assigning resources while at the same time gaining competitive advantage as “price to value is the priority of all” is also one of their main objectives.

Thus began their search for a vendor that would be able to scale their infrastructure and give them support with their future expansion plans.

Avaya: The Emerged Winner

Xiaomi made it clear that they were looking for an efficient CRM system which would help them scale up immediately and give them a strategic advantage in the future. After careful assessment of vendors, Xiaomi chose Avaya to become their enterprise class telephone provider. According to Mr. Ramanathan Chidambaram, Head- Customer Service, Xiaomi India, “What tipped the decision in Avaya’s favor was their expertise in the field and a very strong enterprise class solution, these factors helped seal the deal for us.” Persistence from the Regional Manager of the North, Kapil Kaushik definitely aided in the decision to go with Avaya, “Our experience of having them as our service provider in China was proof that the premium that Avaya charged for their products was worth it.”

Avaya was chosen to co-create a multiple-city and CTI integrated robust data center and service structure for Xiaomi. Avaya outshined the competition due to the system’s reliability, efficiency and satisfying support service. Avaya’s philosophy of sophistication, their future-looking communication services, the ability to provide the right resource at the right time, the ease of use, as well as the management and maintenance flexibility were also key differentiators.

Transforming the Situation

The solution was deployed by Avaya Professional Services (APS), and AGC, an Avaya business partner. “The implementation went smoothly because of the clearly planned time lines that were designed by AGC,” stated Mr. Chidambaram. AGC provides round the clock Facility Management Services to Xiaomi India and onsite engineer support services were provided during and after the implementation of the solution as well. End to end support services for Data Center Management, Networking Services and Collaboration Solutions Management services were utilized. The stakeholders during the implementation were the professionals from APS, AGC and the operations professionals at Xiaomi.

The Right Choice

The immediate impacts were few but significant, since this solution was implemented to handle the scaling ambitions of Xiaomi’s business by replacing the subpar CRM platform with the latest Call Management System (CMS) from Avaya. The solution has addressed their immediate need and increased the number of customers that can be added, provided services on the platform and reduced the system down time. Mr Chidambaram says, “We have moved from the CRM system which had a down time of twenty to twenty five minutes every week, to a system where there has been no downtime in the recent past.”

A Strategic Advantage

The CMS system that has been implemented is a single integrated system that will assist Xiaomi with its strategy of omnichannel engagement with their customers. “The share of voice traffic will be reduced in the future because customers are moving towards options like chat and social media,” stated Mr. Chidambaram, as one of the key insights which was taken into account while investing in the Avaya solution. This increase in non-traditional voice traffic will be tackled by the robust CMS system because it is a forward looking solution. The strategic advantage will likely be fully realized in about 18 to 24 months when the new and existing customers of Xiaomi will be successfully engaging with the self-care system.